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Knowledge-Based Agents (Logical Agents)

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Material from Dr. Marie desJardin, Some material adopted from notes by Andreas Geyer-Schulz and Chuck Dyer

A Knowledge-Based Agent

• A knowledge-based agent needs (at least): •  A knowledge base •  An inference system

• A knowledge base (KB) is a set of representations of facts about the world. •  Each individual representation is a sentence or assertion •  Expressed in a knowledge representation language •  Usually starts with some background knowledge

•  Can be general (world knowledge) or specific (domain language)

• Many existing ideas apply – is it closed-world, etc. 2

A Knowledge-Based Agent

• Operates as follows:

1.  TELLs the knowledge base what it perceives.

2.  ASKs the knowledge base what action to perform.

3.  Performs the chosen action.

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Architecture of a Knowledge-Based Agent

• Knowledge Level – The most abstract level – Describe agent by saying what it knows

–  Example: A taxi agent might know that the Golden Gate Bridge connects San Francisco with the Marin County.

• Logical Level – Level at which knowledge is encoded into sentences.

–  Example: Links(GoldenGateBridge, SanFrancisco, MarinCounty)

•  Implementation Level – The physical representation of the sentences in the logical level.

–  Example: ‘(links goldengatebridge sanfrancisco marincounty)’

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The Wumpus World Environment

• The Wumpus computer game •  Agent explores a cave consisting of rooms connected by

passageways.

•  Lurking somewhere in the cave is the Wumpus, a beast that eats any agent that enters its room.

•  Some rooms contain bottomless pits that trap any agent that wanders into the room.

•  Occasionally, there is a heap of gold in a room.

•  The goal is to collect the gold and exit the world without being eaten (or trapped).

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A Typical Wumpus World

• The agent always starts in the field [1,1].

•  The task of the agent is to find the gold, return to the field [1,1] and climb out of the cave.

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Agent in a Wumpus World: Percepts

•  Agent perceives –  Stench in the square containing the wumpus and in adjacent squares (not

diagonally) –  Breeze in the squares adjacent to a pit –  Glitter in the square where the gold is –  Bump, if it walks into a wall –  Woeful scream everywhere in the cave, if the wumpus is killed

•  The percepts are given as a five-symbol list.

•  If there is a stench and a breeze, but no glitter, no bump, and no scream, the percept is:

[Stench, Breeze, None, None, None]

•  The agent cannot perceive its own location

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Wumpus Agent Actions

•  go forward

•  turn right 90 degrees

•  turn left 90 degrees

•  grab: Pick up an object that is in the same square as the agent

•  shoot: Fire an arrow in a straight line in the direction the agent is facing. •  The arrow continues until it either hits and kills the wumpus or hits the outer wall. •  The agent has only one arrow, so only the first Shoot action has any effect

•  climb: leave the cave. This action is only effective in the start square

•  die: This action automatically happens if the agent enters a square with a pit or a live wumpus

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Wumpus Goal

•  Agent’s goal is to: •  Find the gold

•  Bring it back to the start square as quickly as possible

•  Don’t get killed!

•  Scoring •  1000 points reward for climbing out with the gold

•  1 point deducted for every action taken

•  10000 points penalty for getting killed

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Wumpus Agent’s First Step

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Percepts: [None, None, None, None, None] Percepts: [None, Breeze, None, None, None]

Later

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Wumpuses Online

•  http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~russell/code/doc/overview-AGENTS.html

•  Lisp version from Russell & Norvig

•  http://www.dreamcodex.com/wumpus.php – Java-based version you can play online

•  http://codenautics.com/wumpus/ – Downloadable Mac version

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Representation, Reasoning, and Logic

•  Point of knowledge representation is to express knowledge in a computer usable form

•  Needed for agents to act on it (to do well, anyway)

•  A knowledge representation language is defined by: •  Syntax: all possible sequences of symbols that form sentences

•  Example: noun referents can be a single word or an adjective-then-noun

•  Semantics: facts in the world to which the sentences refer •  What does it mean?

•  Each sentence makes a claim about the world

•  An agent is said to “believe” a sentence about the world

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The Connection Between Sentences and Facts

Semantics maps sentences in logic to facts in the world. The property of one fact following from another is mirrored by the property of one sentence being entailed by another.

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“Dr M is sick with the flu” ⊨ “Dr M is sick”

Entailment and Derivation

• Entailment: KB ⊨ Q •  Q is entailed by KB (a set of premises or

assumptions) if and only if there is no logically possible world in which Q is false while all the premises in KB are true.

•  Or, stated positively, Q is entailed by KB if and only if the conclusion is true in every logically possible world in which all the premises in KB are true.

• Derivation: KB ⊢ Q •  We can derive Q from KB if there is a proof

consisting of a sequence of valid inference steps starting from the premises in KB and resulting in Q

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x ⊢ y: y is provable from x

x ⊨ y: x semantically entails y

Logic as a KR Language

Propositional Logic

First Order

Higher Order

Modal

Fuzzy Logic

Multi-valued Logic

Probabilistic Logic

Temporal Non-monotonic Logic

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Ontology and Epistemology

•  Ontology is the study of what there is—an inventory of what exists. An ontological commitment is a commitment to an existence claim. •  Epistemology is a major branch of philosophy that concerns the forms, nature, and preconditions of knowledge.

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No Independent World Access

•  The reasoning agent often gets its knowledge about the facts of the world as a sequence of logical sentences.

•  Must draw conclusions from them without (other) access to the world.

•  Thus it is very important that the agent’s reasoning is sound!

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KB Agents - Summary

•  Intelligent agents need knowledge about the world for making good decisions.

•  The knowledge of an agent is stored in a knowledge base in the form of sentences in a knowledge representation language.

•  A knowledge-based agent needs a knowledge base and an inference mechanism. It operates by storing sentences in its knowledge base, inferring new sentences with the inference mechanism, and using them to deduce which actions to take.

•  A representation language is defined by its syntax and semantics, which specify structure of sentences and how they relate to world facts.

•  The interpretation of a sentence is the fact to which it refers. If this fact is part of the actual world, then the sentence is true.

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